BH
Answered
Explain the cognitive-behavioural conceptualization of health anxiety.
On Jun 23, 2024
According to this perspective, everyone develops beliefs and attitudes about physical well being and illness through personal experience, observation of others, and information from other people about their experiences. For people with somatic symptom and related disorders, these beliefs are dysfunctional and lead them to pay attention in a biased way to their bodily sensations. Attention bias causes individuals to impose catastrophic misinterpretations when they experience bodily symptoms (i.e., they assume the worst). These attentional and interpretation biases raise anxiety and uncertainty which then motivates repeated safety-seeking behaviour (e.g., reassurance seeking, repeated checking of symptoms, repeated visits to the doctor). These safety behaviours do not bring relief or assurance to the individual and often there is a vicious cycle.